[ricardobayes]

I like the system in UK and Germany where taxpayers need to contribute a fee (but not a tax, to avoid government interference) to fund broadcasters and news.

I think not consuming news is not a reasonable approach in our day and age, you have be informed in order to make good decisions.

[haswell]

> I think not consuming news is not a reasonable approach in our day and age

On the one hand, I agree that it’s necessary to be informed to some degree.

On the other, I think this can be done without consuming the news the way most people do, i.e. the daily dose and certainly the sensationalized stuff are not necessary.

I’ve stopped watching/reading the news on a daily basis, and instead I’ll catch up on the recent major events every week or two, sometimes less depending on the general temperature of things.

I value being informed, but also found that the majority of news changes nothing about my day to day actions, and of the news that does change my actions/help me make better decisions, it almost never needs to be consumed the instant it’s published.

Given the current landscape, personal habit change around news consumption seems like the ideal place to focus as an average person.

[Tomte]

> taxpayers need to contribute a fee (but not a tax, to avoid government interference)

The fee instead of tax isn't to avoid political interference. It's for fee stability, without cuts whenever the budget is tight.

Politicians/the government meddle all the time. The governing body of the public broadcasters has about a third of its members from the government (the rest is the churches and certain social and political associations).

[spejson]

At least in Germany publicly financed broadcasters and news tend to waste a lot of money and they keep asking for more. I’d much rather have a choice to support organizations I want than to support stuff like Y-Kollektiv or STRG F that produce low quality content and sometimes straight out lie.

[dailykoder]

>than to support stuff like Y-Kollektiv or STRG F that produce low quality content and sometimes straight out lie.

After writing my comment I thought about all the influencers and thought 'yeah maybe a good portion ain't really neutral'. It's a bit frustrating, but iirc their cut is something between 1 and 5 cents, right? Which still is too much money, but hey, could be worse than that.

[hulitu]

> where taxpayers need to contribute a fee (but not a tax, to avoid government interference) to fund broadcasters and news

They are actually funding state propaganda. There are few news on public (and private) broadcasters.

[nonrandomstring]

> you have be informed in order to make good decisions.

Surely, one of the key points in TFA is that almost all news is about things we have no real influence over and are removed from effect on us to a large degree. Unless you are a stock-market trader, or there's news of an approaching storm I think most of us just succumb to "Oh Dearism" and chalk it up as "no action necessary" [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07c6llv

[jimbokun]

For voting, you can probably be reasonably informed with several hours of research right before each election.

If you trade individual stocks or other asset classes directly, finance news is pretty important.

Maybe staying on top of the field you personally work in. But that's probably best served by papers and long form articles in specialty blogs and web sites.

Other than that, how does "the news" help you make good decisions?

[Cthulhu_]

In the Netherlands as well, and the main news source (on public broadcasters) is a cooperation between all the broadcasters, which in theory means it's an independent and neutral organization that provides the news. In theory.

There's news on commercial channels as well but it's more aimed at entertainment, often has some lighter subjects and informal newsreaders, and of course ad breaks.

[lodovic]

Another issue is that they have a lot of nonsense on the public TV and radio, such as game shows or light comedy. These broadcasts could very well be done by commercial stations, but as these would need to compete against a state-funded entity, it creates an unfair playing field. The public channels have the advantage of guaranteed funding, which allows them to produce content without the same financial pressures faced by commercial broadcasters.

[smoe]

I stopped reading news around 2012, while working at a large newspaper in Switzerland. Or maybe better put, replaced it with slower forms of information.

Instead of doom scrolling news sites and social media for things that happen right now, you wait for some people to actually have time to investigate, synthesize, etc. There is just little to no actual information in the former way of consumption.

There is a good The Guardian article from back then.

“News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier” (2013

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

[jamil7]

Yeah I've done something similar, I just buy and read the go-to books on the topic I want to know about now. Although I somtimes slip and end up scrolling through some news sites, I've churned through a lot of actual books related to current geopolitics.

[2-3-7-43-1807]

this system only works in theory. in practice they still take orders from the government and money from the industry.

[xdennis]

It's a tax in all but name.

It's not fair to the taxpayer to have to pay for a broadcaster which is biased against you. Even Media Bias agrees that the BBC is left wing: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/ .

State news organizations shouldn't exist because it's impossible to build a one which is unbiased. It will always be biased toward the establishment (which is center left in the UK but varies by country).

[blangk]

Not clear it actually works though

[jimbokun]

Just works better than the privately owned system.

[dailykoder]

I am a german citizen and I always wondered why people hate SO MUCH on that system. Yes, there might be some corrupt people that give themselves too much pocket money, but overall the system works really good.

I didn't stop reading news, but I mostly stopped reading news that are not funded by the "Rundfunkbeitrag", because the funded news organizations are encouraged to be rather neutral and they don't use that much weird rhetoric. All the other private news companies are just trying to clickbait with stupid headlines.

[sunaookami]

Rundfunkbeitrag is waaaay too much and they are not interested in lowering it. Compare that to the similar system in Japan which is way cheaper and they actually lowered the cost in recent years. Germany has too many public radio and tv stations where a lot of content is nearly the same. The ARD is also not as independent as they claim, just look at how many politicans are in the Rundfunkrat.

OP said it's not a tax but it is the same. You have to pay it even if you don't use it and you go to jail if you don't want to pay. Doesn't matter how they are describing it, it's a pseudo-tax.

>the funded news organizations are encouraged to be rather neutral and they don't use that much weird rhetoric

Tagesschau is all but neutral and the tone of ZDF Heute is very aggressive. At least they are consistently bad and private newspapers are even worse so you know what you get. The state of news in Germany is sad but what do you expect when journalists side with politicians and favor more censorship?

[dailykoder]

>Tagesschau is all but neutral and the tone of ZDF Heute is very aggressive. At least they are consistently bad and private newspapers are even worse so you know what you get. The state of news in Germany is sad but what do you expect when journalists side with politicians and favor more censorship?

That made me think a little. You are most likely right. Probably it doesn't bother me too much because it just fits into my world view. Maybe neutral is the wrong word here and I don't know which one fits better. Maybe it just feels good, because everyone else (like everything Springer) is so much worse. At least I don't have the feeling that they spread straight up lies or false propaganda. They might be politically biased though, you are right.

[immibis]

Just like the UK system, what annoys me is pretending this tax isn't a tax, and having to separately register for it instead of just paying taxes.

[graemep]

> I like the system in UK and Germany where taxpayers need to contribute a fee (but not a tax, to avoid government interference) to fund broadcasters and news.

In the UK it does not improve the quality of available news very much.

> I think not consuming news is not a reasonable approach in our day and age, you have be informed in order to make good decisions.

Bad information does not make for good decisions. Your argument is addressed by the article.

It is far better to read long analytical articles, and even more to read books, on the issues you wish to be informed about. A smaller number of works (i.e. books and articles) that give you real understanding, rather than a lot of superficial information that you will mostly not retrain.

Consuming lots of news, gives you a lot of information, but makes it harder retain, analyse and comprehend it.

[OJFord]

> In the UK it does not improve the quality of available news very much.

I disagree, I don't think there's anything better than BBC news for junk food type news, an update on current affairs or the Olympics or something when you do want it.

Of course it's not hard analysis or thought-provoking opinion pieces, pay someone else directly if you want that.

But if someone mentions riots say and I just want to quickly read a couple of things for a high level understanding of what's going on, it's great.

[_rrnv]

The problem with this approach is that you think you are getting a high level understanding but in fact you are not getting the understanding at all. You just get an opinion view based on what facts are reported and what facts are not.

[thorin]

A lot of news is based on opinion but I feel like the BBC try more than most to be impartial see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/imparti...

In fact some of the issues may be caused by being too impartial and giving weight to opinions which many feel should be ignored.

[_rrnv]

Indeed BBC is one of the better ones, however not great judging by the 90s standard ;)

[OJFord]

True, but for the kinds of thing I'm thinking of, and the level of understanding I want (at that point at least) I'm fine with that. (And as sibling says BBC is hardly awful in that regard.)

Take the protests/riots example, I had no awareness of it whatsoever (I don't follow the news any more, just HN really), but I heard enough to be confused and want some idea. The potential political bias in whether it's described as racist/terrorism/peaceful/righteous doesn't really matter to me, I just wanted 'oh, people are angry about things in the vicinity of X, and there are riot police out'.

If I wanted more, yeah the likes of the BBC aren't going to give me deep nourishing (to continue the junk food analogy) insight, and I'd seek out a broadsheet, an insightful blogger, books on the subject, etc. But I don't, so I can instead move on.